


I will rearrange the stars (pull them down to where you are)

by marlahey (imperfectandchaotic)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectandchaotic/pseuds/marlahey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia leaves her scarf in his room.</p><p>(Stiles/Lydia + 'pieces of clothing' – written for the inaugural stydiafest fic exchange hosted on Tumblr)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will rearrange the stars (pull them down to where you are)

**Author's Note:**

> So I make up a thing in the middle but otherwise canon compliant throughout all of season three. Started out all cute and then the finale happened and then got all dark and sad because, well. That. 
> 
> I can't believe I actually managed a stand alone fic without linking it to 8 billion others. Miraculous.

The night of Allison's birthday is cold.

It's a struggle to keep the candle alight; Lydia almost reconsiders her spot beneath Allison's favourite practice tree in the dark preserve. But the leaves are crisp and the candle only heightens the smell of autumn all around her, and—

she's supposed to be seventeen.

Lydia sits beneath the tree she nearly died next to and stares at the flame. She should probably be a little wary, is the first tangible thought Lydia comes up with. She's alone in the woods and the moon is barely a sliver in the sky. For all she knows a zombie is going to burst through the trees and try to eat her brain. 

Somehow after faerie monarchies nothing will ever be surprising.

"Scott's okay," Lydia tells the flame, suddenly determined to discuss only good things with her dearest friend. "He comes to see your gr — _you,_ every Sunday, but I guess you knew that? You really did a number on that boy, you know." 

She wants to smile but her lips won't do it. "He and Kira are good. Adorable, actually. He's taking her to prom." Lydia has to take a deep breath — and then two more. She recalls the last dance they all attended together, and then has to push memories away. "I know what you're going to say," she continues as the flame flickers. "But I—"

Lydia has not cried since the funeral. Even here in the enveloping darkness, there is a reluctance to break her streak. "But I don't have a date. Isaac's still in France with your dad — can we talk about that please? I think I'd be mortified, I can't imagine you'd be okay with the idea, especially after the whole...lightning stick incident. He calls sometimes, but..."

But Lydia can hear it in his voice. He's not coming back. 

"Danny's off for a not-so-secret meeting with Aiden. You'd think they'd be a little more subtle about it, but Ethan made good on his promise to leave. He just...can't leave Danny, I guess." This time she manages a wry twist of her lips. "And before you ask, Stiles is—"

"Wondering who you're currently not freezing to death?"

Before Lydia can manage a proper scream, her hand grabs the closest thing within reach — a fallen branch — and hurtles it in the direction of the voice. There is a whistle of air, a  _thump,_ and an "ow!" 

"Stiles, you idiot!" She jumps to her feet just as a beam of light finds her eyes. "If you don't put that down right now I swear the next thing I throw is going to have a pointier end."

The light disappears; Lydia blinks her fury out of her eyes before they land on the shape of Stiles in the dark, a flashlight in his grip as he raises both hands in a gesture of surrender. 

"What are you doing here?" she demands as her heart settles. Stiles' expression goes from sheepish to elsewhere that Lydia refuses to follow.

"Looking for you," he says, as though they weren't here — in the woods, in the dark, in the faint glow of a single candle — but they are, and her chest hurts, suddenly.

"Well you found me," Lydia replies, feeling oddly defensive. She crosses her arms over her chest, half assertion, half ward against the sudden chill in the air.

She also doesn't like the way Stiles is looking at her still, that careful, tender gaze, and wishes she had something to throw between them to protect her from those dark eyes. 

"It's her birthday," she says, almost a plea.  

"I know." There is no pity in it.

She sits back down. Shockingly the candle hasn't died in the excitement; the flame shudders though as Stiles plants himself beside her and dumps something soft and warm into her lap. 

It's his lacrosse hoodie. 

"I'm fine," Lydia says, a sharp stab of petulance in her stomach. Stiles looks at her, and then at the candle. 

"I know," he repeats calmly. "Just for if you're ever not."

A few minutes later, she pulls the sweater over her head.

If Lydia just happens to lean against him as the melted wax pools, then she'll never tell.

And if his fingers find hers in the enormous front pocket, well.

Allison won't tell, either. 

 

*

     

                 *

 

                *                

 

It all happens very quickly. 

One minute they're facing off against the self-proclaimed King of Faeries and the next everything is chaos; Kira looks almost as though she's dancing with every swing, Allison's arrows shred beautiful wings and Isaac's snarl rips through the air and there is so much blood — the black of the fae and the red of Scott's ruined arm as Lydia drags him out of the fray — Stiles watches mountain ash slip through his fingers, and at last—

something slow.

But maybe that's the shock.

  

They burst through the McCalls' front door —  _for emergencies,_ Melissa had said,  _when you need someplace safe_ (and Stiles had refrained from explaining that they would never be  _safe_ , not here in Beacon Hills, not when blood still stained an ancient, mystical tree, not since Peter Hale had decided to alter the paths of their lives forever on that dark, cold night) — and this is definitely an emergency.   

Lydia and Isaac haul a pale Scott up his room while Derek barks something furious about faerie poison and disappears, presumably, to find Peter. Allison doesn't relax her bow until they are all within the threshold of the house and the safety of its floorboards. Lydia is covered in blood — black in her hair and red _(Scott's,_ Stiles' mind shouts) on her clothes and on her skin, bright like a scream. 

 _She didn't scream tonight,_ Stiles thinks dully as Lydia disappears into the bathroom with a random bundle of clothing in her hands. Perhaps it's only for those who bleed crimson. Or because Scott is not yet close enough to death. He doesn't feel too badly about the self-proclaimed ruler of the Fae, who was almost as big of an asshole as Deucalion and slightly more narcissistic, but Stiles remembers a Fae child, staring over the shoulder of an adult, being carried as the remaining faerie fled after the fight. 

Stiles thinks of those wide green eyes and wonders of his own look that haunted. 

"Stiles? Stiles!"

He starts from listening to Kira hush Scott, the soothing warmth of her voice like a balm over the room, and turns to Lydia. She's shed her ruined shirt for another one that is so loose and cut short (cropped? a crop top? girls' fashion is confusing) he can see her belly button (innie, like him), the bare curve of her shoulders, and the jut of her collarbones as Lydia ties the white string on pair of burgundy sweatpants  _— his_ sweatpants, to be precise. 

They're from freshman year (he can tell from the placement of the tiny Beacon Hills Lacrosse logo on the front left leg and the small white  _24_ beneath, both crackled and worn from many washes and wear),  _how did those get here?_ The logical part Stiles' brain offers several logical explanations, including sleepovers and accidental swap with Scott, but the rest of his mind is too busy cataloguing how low his sweats sit on Lydia's hips, how tight she has to pull the waist ties, and how little he can see of her feet.

His mouth is dry.

"—hot water and bandages. Stiles? _Hey!"_

He starts again as Lydia waves a hand in his face. There is something peculiar in her expression, something beneath the fear and the irritation that he cannot name.

"With me?"

Stiles tears his eyes away from the inches of skin between her shirt and his pants. Some other ridiculous part of Stiles' brain flashes with images, like an old movie projection: Sunday mornings, quiet evenings, Lydia lounging with her hair up and reading with dark glasses in this outfit, in _his_ sweats, as though they were hers all along and he'd just been borrowing them all this time. 

His gut aches with how much he wants it. 

Her. 

"Yeah," he says, "I'm with you."

 

*

     

                 *

 

*

 

 She can't do up her dress. 

Her arms hurt from twisting around her back; Lydia drops them in frustration, glaring at her reflection in the mirror across the room. She refuses to cry  _—_ this is attempt number three at her makeup (one can only take so many raccoon eyes)  _—_ she has to keep it together. If only her wardrobe would get with the program. It's a good thing this dress was on sale, she thinks bitterly. 

Lydia will never wear it again. 

The dress is black chiffon; higher in the front while two stripes of lace divide her back in a sharp V, exposing the line of her spine and the wings of her shoulder blades. Lydia managed most of the zipper just fine, but it hovers half an inch below the hidden clasp closure. Hysteria is closing in. If she can't get this, she's not going. 

She's always hated funeral services anyway. 

"Lydia?"

Stiles knocks softly and sticks his head in the doorway, and she might just cry again at his stupid timing. 

"You almost ready?"

Lydia hasn't seen him in a shirt and tie since winter formal. She's forgotten how much it  _— oh god was her brain really going to make a pun right now? _—__ suited him. 

"The zipper," she says, and takes a breath to say more, to explain it properly, but none of the words come out. But Stiles doesn't seem to need an explanation. He steps into the room, putting warm hands on her shoulders to turn her gently so her back is facing him. It doesn't tickle,  _per se,_ but Lydia finds she doesn't have words for the feeling as Stiles finds the zipper, or his rough knuckles against her spine as he works the butterfly clasp. 

Tears fill her eyes, too quickly to keep at bay as he turns her around again. 

"I'm such a mess," she says, half apology, blinking against the edge of her hand in an attempt to salvage her makeup. 

"Hey," Stiles lifts her chin to look Lydia in the eye. "You're perfect."

She isn't and they both know it, but the sentiment is there at least. Lydia has to press her lips together to keep a sob down. It feels as though he wants to say something else, but loses his nerve and swallows instead. 

"Your tie is crooked," she says, instead of  _I love you_ , reaching with trembling hands to fuss with the knot of silk at Stiles' throat. He shrugs. 

"Out of practice."

_Well I think you look beautiful._

Lydia adjusts the knot and smooths the tie, suddenly unable to look at him when Stiles' hands close over her own, trapping them against his beating heart. 

"We don't have to leave until you're ready," he says gently. 

 _I am,_ is on the tip of her tongue, but her heart is so heavy with loss that she can't quite tell the lie. Lydia closes her eyes and somehow manages not to tremble when Stiles releases one of her hands to let his fingers trail up and down her spine as she breathes. Her grip tightens almost involuntarily against his shirt, and when Stiles presses his remaining hand to the bare skin of her back and his lips to the crown of her head, it takes every bone in her body not to collapse right then and there. 

Lydia breathes until she is certain she will not cry, until she has memorized the pads of Stiles' fingers and the sure beat of his heart. When she can finally look up at him, his eyes are so warm and tender that Lydia might start crying all over again. 

She wants to kiss him so badly that her chest hurts.

She's been having that feeling a lot lately, it seems.  

But Stiles takes her hand before she can give in, before Lydia can rush headfirst into the thing that frightens her most of all, closing his fingers over hers again in a way that somehow settles her heart. 

"Alright?" 

She can't speak, so she nods instead. One more press of her lips, one more swallow of words that could damn and lift her both, and one more pass over Stiles' tie. 

"Let's go."

 

 

*

     

                 *

 

*

 

  

Lydia leaves her scarf in his room. 

It must have been there a while, Stiles muses as he picks it up from the floor by his bed and hangs it on his desk chair. He recalls her wearing it in the fall, a wash of pale pink against dark peacoats and the red of her hair, the way the cherry blossom print would shift whenever Lydia pulled it over her head and shook her hair out. She must have done that here, in his room. It's winter now; Stiles can see his breath some mornings and knows that this thin scarf, though pretty and sturdier than usual summer choices, won't keep out the cold. So he hangs up the scarf and resolves, next time Lydia's here, he'll return it to her. 

A lot of things happen; Stiles forgets.

Weeks after Isaac traps the last firefly, after Stiles stains his fingernails with soft earth from Allison's grave, after the third time he wakes up with the ghost of the Nogitsune in his mind and the feeling of black dust all over his skin, Stiles finds the scarf again. He sits cross legged on the bed with the cherry blossom pattern spilling softly over his fingers and into his lap, trying to focus all of his senses: the folds and shifts of the pattern, the softness of the fabric, the faint scent of Lydia's perfume.

 _You're fine,_ he tells himself, like a mantra.  _You're here._

Eventually, the voice inside his head starts to sound like hers. 

_You're here. You're okay._

He doesn't remember making the conscious decision to get in the jeep and drive to Lydia's house, but somehow he ends up at her front door with the scarf tangled in his hands. Panic is beginning to press from all sides; he breathes slowly and tries to count his heartbeats. After a minute, the lock turns and a moonlit pale Lydia appears in the doorway. 

For a second, Stiles forgets to breathe at all. 

"Stiles?"

She peers up at him (he forgets constantly how small she really is without three inches of death lifting her heel), anxiety and concern in the line between her eyebrows and the downturn of her mouth. "Stiles, what's wrong?"

Déjà vu screams. 

Stiles opens his mouth to speak but finds his throat dry. The panic is rising in a swell; any moment now the wave will crash down and swallow him. Lydia presses her lips together before she grabs him by the arm and drags him up the stairs to her room. 

"You are seriously freaking me out," she hisses as the door closes behind them. "Please Stiles, I need you to say something right now. Tell me what's going on."

His heart is smacking too erratically into his ribcage to keep count. 

"You left this in my room," he says, the words almost falling out like he'd dropped them by accident. Stiles holds out the scarf, but his fingers spasm. It falls to the floor, and in looking at it there he is suddenly afraid to look up, to see what Lydia makes of his odd hysteria. 

"I kept meaning to give it back," Stiles continues in a rush, aware and removed all at once from his babbling. "But things just _—_ I was  _—_ I just _—_ "

"Hey." 

Lydia grabs one of his hands, forcing him to look into her eyes and find the bright steadiness there. "It's okay." She scoops the scarf up with her free hand and uses the other to pull him towards the bed and push him gently to sit on her mussed covers. Guilt flickers in his stomach. "It doesn't matter, it's here now." 

Lydia ducks her head to catch Stiles' eye. "Just breathe, Stiles. You're here. You're okay." She presses a cool hand to his cheek. "Just look at me, alright?"

_Stiles, look at me._

Stiles  _is_ here, but he is also now on a dusty floor in the warm light of the sun, with Lydia's hands holding his face and her wide eyes casting his own panicked reflection back at him. He still can't breathe, but that's where the similarities end. Because this time it's Stiles who rushes forward, and this time it's Lydia's gasp that they swallow between them when he captures her mouth with his.

And just like the first time, his brain goes strangely quiet.

They pull apart and a voice in Stiles is immediately panicking, though it is a different panic now, because _what if he should **not** have done that?_  

"I'm sorry," he manages, forcing himself to look Lydia in the eye and see the surprise there. "I—"

"Stiles." She cuts him off before he can start rambling, which is good because when she holds his eyes once more, there is that look again; he sees that strange, open gaze from all those weeks ago when Lydia's hands were bloodstained and her feet were lost in the fabric of his sweats and all of Stiles' sense of urgency and time and space just fell away because  _this is it._

And it is, here, now. 

And Stiles just wants to  _know,_ if just maybe, after all this time, if Lydia feels it too. 

So he leans forward again, slow this time, reaching one hand to cup her face and give her every opportunity to pull away. Subtle or not, Stiles would get the message and, well...that would be that. It wouldn't be all that different than it is now, except that part of Stiles' heart would finally be able to settle. This is, of course, presuming that Lydia will pull away. 

But she doesn't. 

Lydia just stays very still as he cradles her jaw and leans closer, tilting his head so their noses don't squash. It's not until they're an inhale apart that Stiles forces himself to stop, to let her pull away if she wants to, but Lydia just lifts her chin to meet him instead. And at first there is a sort of whiteness in his brain, like it has no grasp on what he's doing or what this means or what any of his life was before right this second. But then his fingers sort of slide into Lydia's hair as he shifts a little closer and she makes this little sound into his mouth and—

_ holy fucking shit.  _

This is happening.

He is kissing Lydia Martin. 

And it is amazing.

Stiles isn't sure how, but they end up horizontal on the bed and Stiles finds himself flailing a bit. 

"Oh god, is this okay? Are you—I mean, I'm not crushing you or anyth—"

"Stiles." 

Lydia's eyes are dark, her lips a bit swollen, her hair is strewn all over her pillow and caught a little in her scarf that ended up beneath them. Stiles stares at it, at the soft curls of her hair, at the pale perfect line of her throat, and realizes that he has never been more in love with her than he is in this moment and that's a bit of a scary thought—

"You with me?"

He snaps back to attention. Her gaze has gone soft and fond and a knot twists in Stiles' throat. 

"Yeah," he manages hoarsely. Stiles prays his fingers don't shake as he brushes a stray hair from Lydia's face. She smiles and catches his hand. 

"So I'm okay."

It sort of feels as though his chest is going to explode. Stiles thinks of the way the Nogitsune's skin had cracked before it vanished and he finds himself feeling a bit like that sometimes, like something cracked and no longer whole and hollow with darkness. But then he looks at Lydia now and she is all the light he needs; she fills all of his dark spaces with warmth and light and this feeling in his heart that says,  _this is it, here, now._

_now. tomorrow. forever._

"Good," is all he can say, but it's apparently enough.

And if Lydia kisses him back a little harder every time she wears that scarf from now on, well. 

Bonus.  

**Author's Note:**

> Just realized I accidentally left Malia out. 
> 
> Oops?
> 
> Ugh what a perfect prompt bless you whoever came up with it. Thank you to Kris for being her amazing self as ever and giving this a last-minute once-over, and thank you to Kahlia and Kris for hosting such a great fic exchange. I look forward to many more!


End file.
